Date: 22 October 2002
Sean-Marc Taylor-Sabori is a United Kingdom national. Between August 1995 and the applicant’s arrest on 21 January 1996, he was kept under police surveillance. Using a “clone” of the applicant’s pager, the police were able to intercept messages sent to him.
The applicant was arrested and charged with conspiracy to supply a controlled drug. The prosecution alleged that he had been a principal organiser in the importation to the United Kingdom from Amsterdam of over 22,000 ecstasy tablets worth approximately GBP 268,000. He was tried, along with a number of alleged co-conspirators, at Bristol Crown Court in September 1997. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
The applicant appealed against conviction and sentence. One of the grounds was the admission in evidence of the pager messages. The Court of Appeal, dismissing the appeal on 13 September 1998, upheld the trial judge’s ruling that the messages had been intercepted at the point of transmission on the private radio system, so that the 1985 Act did not apply and the messages were admissible despite having been intercepted without a warrant.
The applicant complained, principally, under Articles 8 (right to respect for private and family life) and 13 (right to an effective remedy) that the interception of his pager messages by the police and subsequent reference to them at his trial amounted to an unjustified interference with his private life and correspondence which was not “in accordance with the law” and in respect of which there was no remedy under English law.
Citation: Taylor-Sabori v the United Kingdom (App no 47114/99) ECHR 22 October 2002
(from the official press-release prepared by the Registry Office of the European Court of Human Rights)
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